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It’s hard keeping up with the never ending stream of expiring domain name listings. Every day, hundreds of thousands of domains are in play. If you take a break or have an appointment, you could easily skip doing the research you need to find the best domains every day.

To solve that, and generally, to just make life easier for domain investors everywhere, we’ve added a new feature – saved searches.

With a saved search set up, you’ll receive an email every morning at 2AM EST, with any listings that match the search criteria, that will expire within the next 24 hours.

1. Saved searches can work across all of our major databases of expiring domain names – GoDaddy, NameJet, SnapNames, and Pending Delete listings. This fact alone makes using saved searches a huge time saver. Instead of conducting the same search on 4 different pages each day, you can just review a single email that contains all of the listings.
2. All of the existing filters work for saved search filters. This means you can do keyword searches (for example ‘baseball’), or you can search on the properties of names, such as number of words, high appraisal value, number of characters, or dscore.
3. There’s no limit on the number of saved searches you can set up. If you need 100 saved searches, to monitor specific keywords, then go ahead and set them up.
4. Saved searches are easy to cancel. If you find a saved search is consistently not producing good results, you can cancel it with a single click. You can also cancel all of your saved search emails with a just a couple clicks.

Saved search emails are sent daily at 2am EST. That should give anyone ample time to view the email, and make a decision on the names, prior to those names requiring an action. The first names to require action each day, are GoDaddy expiring domains listings, where listings begin to expire daily around noon EST daily. Pending Delete names being to be dropped daily around 2pm EST. So, by sending the emails at 2am, it gives about 10 to 12 hours advanced warning before any action is required.

Saved searches are different from email alerts on Generic Domain Finder. Email alerts are a daily email of domains that a user has explicitly added to a watch list by clicking the email icon next to the domain name. Email alerts are good in case you see a name that you like, and want to be reminded about it on the day that the listing expires. On the other hand, saved searches are good for discovering names that are expiring each day.

Hopefully saved searches will be a useful feature. In case anyone has any feedback, feel free to send an email message through the contact form.

It can be a pain to filter through each of these lists individually every single day, so to make it easier for domain investors, we put the best names all on a single listing.

The listing is updated every single hour, so check back several times a day, to see what the best possible available names are.

The usual search and filter options are available on the expiring domains page, to allow you to filter the extensions you’re interested, or other factors. In addition, we’ve added a ‘points’ data column. Points is a combination of appraisal factors, and desirability factors. The more extensions that are registered, the higher the desirability score, and the higher points score the domain will receive.

Listing expiration and drop times

As a domain investor in the expiring domains game, it’s important to be aware of the times that certain domain name listings expire every day. By being aware of these general times, it greatly increases your chances of snagging the best names that you want to pick up for your portfolio. Here are the key drop times to keep in mind (all times listed in EST):

GoDaddy – expiring domain names are generally staggered throughout the afternoon time, from 11am through 4pm EST.

PendingDelete – names are dropped between 2 and 3pm EST daily. Generally speaking, the drop happens in a span of about 30 minutes, but it’s hard to predict the exact time that any name will drop.

NameJet – backorders must be placed by 11pm EST daily. If there are other bidder for the same name, a 3 day competitive auction will take place.

SnapNames – backorders must be placed by midnight (12am EST) daily. If there are other backorders for the name, a competitive auction will be scheduled.

Of course, if you miss the domain name that you were following, there’s always a chance it won’t be registered by anyone, and you can pick it up for the cost of a registration fee. For those names, look through our listing of dropped domains.

DScore is basically a measure of the desirability of the keywords in the domain name. A Domain gets 1 point for every extension that we track (COM, NET, ORG, INFO, US, BIZ), that was already registered.

For example, consider the domain publicrelationsjobs.net (public relations jobs). At the time this article was published, the extensions COM, NET, ORG, INFO, and US were already registered, while the BIZ extension was free to register. Thus, this domain would get a DScore of 5. Since we’re currently tracking 6 different extensions, the highest possible DScore would be 6.

The number of extensions registered has long been used as a signal of quality among savvy domain name investors, and now it’s easy to apply this criteria to your search here at Generic Domain Finder.

It’s possible to use DScore in conjunction with other search parameters. For instance, you could do a search on all of the NameJet PreRelease listings for all COM domains containing 2 words, that have a DScore greater than 3.

DScore example search

Example search results using DScore search criteria

We have plans to continue to add innovative new features to help generic domain name investors stay competitive. Stay tuned to the blog for posts about new features!

As I was randomly glancing over stats for Generic Domain Finder early today, I noticed something very interesting on the new “Real Time” view. The “Real Time” – Overview page shows a live view of all of the visitors to a site, along with a map view that shows the actual geographic location of those visitors.

Usually when you mouse over one of those orange dots on the map, it tells you the actual city name of that visitor. It’s fun to look at now and then, since a website can really get visitors from cities around the world that you’ve never heard of before.

This time, when I put my mouse over the dot, I was surprised to see that the visitor was actually from the Whitehouse. Take a look:

whitehouse website visitor

Obviously president Obama has been in tune with the power of the Internet as a way to reach a younger demographic, and it was very instrumental in securing his election back in 2008. With the election just around the corner, perhaps he’s researching a few more great domains, to add additional firepower in some key swing states? The president is certainly a very crafty man, and it seems he may be trying to harness the power of direction navigation traffic to sway the election!

Another possibility is that there’s some interest in domain names as an investment. The name obama.org attracted quite a bit of interest when it was auctioned through Namejet last August. With the name pulling in $2,800 in the end.

obama.or namejet auction results

The president obviously has some cash for investment, thanks to the healthy royalty payments from the two books that he has written. Perhaps some of that will be used to buy domain names?

We’ve released a new page on Generic Domain Finder this week – a universal expiring domains page. This page lists the best names which require action within the next 24 hours. The list is compiled with names from 4 separate sources:

This list has a couple of special advances that we’re especially proud of. For one, the list has been filtered for any names that contain major brands or trademarks. It’s not a good idea to buy names containing trademarks, because the trademark holder could easily seize the name without any compensation to you. But, often, trademark containing names appraise high, because those trademark keywords are searched for frequently.

With the new filtering system we’ve built, about 90% of the names that contain trademarks get filtered out. This makes a huge difference in the quality of names that display. Instead of seeing lots of listings for domains that contain ‘ipad’ and ‘ipod’ or ‘microsoft’ or ‘google’ keywords, you’ll generally see a good, clean listing of generic keyword domains.

Additionally, we’re ranking these names based on ‘points’. The points takes into consideration both the appraisal value of the domain, as well as the desirability of the keywords to other domain investors. If more of the extensions have been registered, it’s a signal to us that the name is more desirable, and thus, the scoring algorithm will award the domain in question a higher point score.

The expiring domains page is updated every hour, so you can check back, and keep an eye on any domains that you are interested in.

If it’s your first time to order a domain from a particular type of listing, you should probably give yourself some time to study the mechanics of placing an order. The case of NameJet, SnapNames, and GoDaddy, you’ll need to have an account with any of the services before you can place a bid. With the case of Pending Delete names, we currently link these over to SnapNames drop catching service. You could place an order with any of the other major services that offer drop catching, or even try to catch the name yourself. In most cases, the pending delete names that end up on the listing of top expiring domain names will get snatched by a drop catcher or a drop catching service. The ones that are for some reason less attractive will end up becoming dropped domains and could be freely registered.

It’s no secret among domain investors that one of the best places to find great domain names these days is through the NameJet PreRelease listings. When domain names expire from registrars like Network Solutions, eNom, BulkRegister, Tucows, Fabulous, and RegistryPro, the names will eventually end up being listed for backorder on NameJet. Domain investors can get the first chance to grab these names by placing a backorder on these listed names. If a backorder is placed on a name here, it won’t go through the redemption period and later on be dropped.

Generic Domain Finder has been tracking the best names that show up in the NameJet PreRelease listings since the start of 2012. Just because a name gets listed in the NameJet PreRelease listings doesn’t automatically mean it’s any good. In fact, at any given time, there may be around 300,000 names classified as PreRelease by NameJet. Generic Domain Finder applies an initial screening process to the list, and finds the names that have the most potential to be interesting to domain name investors.

Our screening process makes use of our free domain appraisal technology, to cut up each domain name into it’s component keywords, and to track any which contain misspellings, which reduce the potential resale value of the domain. It then tries to make an estimate of the value of the domain, based on the search volume of the keywords, the potential economic value of the keywords, as well as other properties of the domain name, including the number of characters, and the number of keywords in the domain.

The screening process cuts off more than 90% of the list of PreRelease domain names. That leaves more than 20,000 names to filter through – which is still more than most domain name investors want to take the time to filter through. Here are some tips that will help you find some of the undiscovered gold that exists in the listing of 20,000 names.

Searching for two word domains and three word domains

There are lots of other tools out there that attempt to find valuable domain names in the PreRelease listings. Several of them use a dictionary database to find exact match single keywords, to highlight for their users. As a result, single keyword domain names tend to attract a high volume of bids on NameJet. For example, as of April 1st, 2012, police.net has already attracted 191 bids from interested buyers, who have discovered the name and are interested to buy it.

police.net prerelease listing at namejet, 191 bids

However, it’s not as easy to find the great domain names that have 2 and 3 keywords, since there are very few tools online that offer that data. Generic Domain Finder provides an easy filter to select the number of keywords in the domain.

filter to find 2 and 3 keyword domains

The search results show both the original domain name, as well as the associated keywords in the domain name. Our keyword splitting technology is smart enough to recognize foreign language keywords and even names of people and places.

2 word domain name auction listings

Currently, based on recent domain name sales, there seems to be a sweet spot with 2 and 3 word domain names – so this is a tool that should help to put money into your pocket.

These filters are available on all of the domain name listings on Generic Domain Finder, including our growing list of dropped domains.

Searching for short brandable .COM domains

Another trend among domainers has been to invest in short brandable domain names. Generally, these names don’t have meaning associated with the word already. Ideally, the word will be short and pronounceable.

For these domains, it’s key to have the .COM. Since the potential buyer is a startup company, they will only having interest in buying a premium domain name if they will be able to buy the .COM extension.

A service called Wordoid generates these kinds of names automatically. However, as a frequent visitor to their site, it’s clear that even for a site like Wordoid, it’s harder and harder to find good, short, unregistered, brandable .COM domain names. That makes the domain aftermarket a perfect place to search for these names.

To find these kinds of names on Generic Domain Finder, the settings I suggest are to limit the characters to something in the range of 6 to 8, the number of words to 1, and to only check .COM.

Suggested filter settings to find short, brandable .com domains

Lots of other screening services will help you to find the short .COM domain names in the NameJet PreRelease listings. Generic Domain Finder has the advantage that it prefilters the NameJet listings to only select the names that have a higher chance of being valuable to an investor.

Example short brandable com names

As always, there’s nothing certain about the process of using Namejet. Often times, a name you’ll be tracking will turn to wishlist status on the final day before your backorder would have been processed. Generally, that happens if the owner of the domain name renewed the registration of the domain. That can be frustrating. But there are so many good names available in the NameJet listings, that you’ll surely be able to find other great names to invest in.

Generic Domain Finder isn’t always the best tool when you’re searching for domain names. In fact, there is a great ecosystem of wonderful tools that may be useful to the domain name investor. Here are a couple that we think are great.

As you type domain availability tools

These tools started coming out about 5 years ago, and just caught fire, because they solved a problem that every one was having. Usually, when you’re searching for a domain name, the first choice, or the most obvious choice you want is already taken. At that point, you want to start quickly iterating on the name – maybe adding a suffix, maybe changing the name slightly. If you have to wait for a web page to load each time, it can be really slow. It’s much better if you can see the availability of the name as you type – and it makes your brainstorming much much more effective.

As far as I know, the first such tool was Instant Domain Search. It hasn’t changed very much since it was released, but based on it’s Alexa ranking, it’s still widely popular.

Shortly after I started using Instant Domain Search, a friend introduced me to Domize. Domize is basically Instant Domain Search on steroids. It lets you pick from 30 different TLDs, including .INFO, .CO.UK, and .CO. Additionally, the entire site is SSL secured. That means, there’s less chance of a hacker stealing your names as you are typing them into the site.

Another great as you type service is NameNinja. This one is probably the most interesting for generic domain investors, as it combines instant availability checking with Google Suggest. I think I should just redirect Generic Domain Finder Instant to Name Ninja, because they’ve really done such a nice job with the tool.

Made up domain name finder

Since almost all real words have been taken already, there’s been a trend towards making up domain names. Generally, the made up domain names combine a real word root with a prefix or a suffix to make a pronounceable, relatively short domain name. It’s natural that tools would be created to help people generate these kinds of names, because it’s really hard to think up these names yourself.

My absolute favorite domain name generator service is called Wordoid. The homepage gives some suggested domain names, and tells you if the .COM is available or not. It also tells you how many search results the term has in Google. If the number is low or 0, that’s a great sign. That means you can start your own brand, without worrying that someone has already trademarked it. Wordoid also lets you include a root word to include in all of the keywords it suggests to you. That can be useful if you have a core idea for the domain name you want to use, but are looking for some variations on that name. Generally all of the suggestions of Wordoid are pronounceable, which is important for a brand name.

Finally, another very interesting service for finding made up domain names is called Picky Domains. This is the only one on the list that’s not free – but for the service that they provide, it’s not actually very expensive at all. For $50, they will have an army of people good at thinking up creative domain names, think about your business idea, and propose names to you. The list of domain names that have been picked up through the service is actually quite interesting.

We’re always on the lookout for great tools that help online entrepreneurs and domain investors find great domain names. If there are any that should be on this list or a future listing, please contact us and let us know!

Every day there are more opportunities to pick up other, potentially great domains into a portfolio. The trouble is, there are just so many possible names to evaluate. There are names for sale in forums, names for back order in expiring domain listings, and of course, countless sites like SEDO which allow domain owners to list names for sale.

The shear amount of names that are available for purchase every single day is what drives the need for a domain appraisal tool. A domain appraisal tool, like the free domain appraisal tool from Generic Domain Finder, can help a domain investor to make a quick decision about names they are thinking about buying.

The main key features of a domain appraisal are:

1. to parse any keywords in the domain. Most domain names get their value from the keywords embedded in the domain. The more valuable the keywords, the more valuable the domain. For instance, a domain name like gymmembership.com would be very valuable, because the keywords in it are often searched by people who are ready to make a purchase of a gym membership.

When presented with a long list of possible domain names to evaluate, it’s important to have a tool that is able to reliably cut up the keywords in the domain into individual words. A tool that isn’t able to do that is useless, because the domain investor needs to read each domain one by one to recognize if the keywords are valuable.

2. estimate the value of the keywords in the domain. Once the keywords in the domain have been cut up, the next step is to evaluate how valuable those keywords actually are. Keywords are valuable for two main reasons – search volume and economic interest. Search volume is an estimate of how many exact match searches are conducted on the keyword every month. Some high volume keywords like ‘celebrity gossip’ might be valuable just because so many people search for it every day – even if the searches don’t usually lead to the purchase of any kind of product.

On the other hand, a search for a term like ‘Manhattan apartment’ might have a much lower search volume, but might still be very valuable, if the keywords in the search often lead to a transaction. In this case, the rental or purchase of an expensive apartment in New York City.

By packaging these two main features into a free online tool, it enables domain investors to handle their work in a much more productive way. Before, domain investors needed to pour over long lists every day, to find good domain names. Now, with a free domain appraisal tool like Generic Domain Finder, it’s much easier to quickly pour through lists of thousands of domains to find the best of the best.

We’re please to announce an update to the Generic Domain Finder domain name appraisal system. The results page now shows live domain availability for .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .US, and .BIZ. Here’s a screenshot from an example search result:

Live Availability Along With Domain Name Appraisal

A red dot indicates that the domain name is currently unavailable. A green dot indicates that the domain can immediately be registered. All of the green dots are linked to GoDaddy for easy registration.

This additional availability should make it easier to to domain name analysis at the time of running your appraisal. For instance, suppose you are considering to big on a .ORG domain name at auction. After you run the appraisal, if you notice that the .NET is still available, you could just save your time and money by buying that .NET, instead of going after the .ORG in a competitive auction.

Also, domain availability also gives additional clues to the potential value of a domain. If only a .COM extension was registered, and all other extensions were not yet registered, it indicates that there is overall less interest in the domain name. However, if most of the other extensions were registered, the domain name keywords would seem to be more valuable.

In addition to adding domain availability along side the appraisal results, the March 2012 update includes:

Improved speed. The results should be twice as fast, or faster for most search results.

As always, appraisals are free for all users. Unlike other domain appraisal systems, we don’t limit the number of appraisal results for free users ever! Use Generic Domain Finder to appraise domain names all day long! If you get tired of entering the captcha, just create a free account. You’ll never have to pay for domain name appraisals at Generic Domain Finder.

We hope that you like the most recent upgrade. Please send us any feedback, positive or negative, as well as any new feature requests to include in upcoming releases!

Generic Domain Finder has a new feature that makes it easier to keep track of the expiring domain names that you want to track and register. Now, while you’re reviewing lists of Godaddy Expiring Domain Auctions, NameJet PreRelease names, and pending delete names, you can easily save the names to your account, and get an email update on the day that you need to take action. Here’s how it works:

First, create a free account, and sign in with that account. You need to create an account so that we know what email address to send the email alerts to.

Generic Domain Finder login and sign up area

Next, while you are browsing the lists of expiring domain name listings, you’ll notice a small letter icon next to the domain name. Click the icon of any name that you want to track.

click here to save the domain name listing to your account

The icon will turn green to let you know that the listing has been saved to your account.

mail icon turns green to indicate success

The day that the listing expires, you’ll receive an email that shows all of the names that you need to take action on. For PreRelease names, this means placing a backorder at NameJet. For GoDaddy, that means placing a bid at or near the time that the listing expires, and for pending delete names, that means either placing a back order at the major drop catching services (such as NameJet, Pool, or Snapnames), or attempting to drop catch the name yourself.